in your life you were larger than this
by arsonistlullaby
Summary: At first he thinks he is seeing things... but then the stranger speaks his name, a broken smile hanging from the edges of her mouth, and he is certain that the tired, unkempt woman in front of him is indeed the girl he'd left to burn and crumble with the ruins of District 12.


I do not claim to have any affiliation with The Hunger Games. The lyrics used in this fic are taken from the song 'Signs' by Bloc Party, which is one of my most favorite painful Gadge songs. This is also cross-posted on AO3 under the same pen name.

This is loosely based of a headcanon sent to me ages ago by my lovely friend Emma (annakorlovs on Tumblr).

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1\. the last time we slept together, there was something that was not there

_"You know, you're really, really lucky," Madge whispered into the crook of his neck, her voice vibrating against his skin._

_"Yeah? Why is that?" he asked sleepily._

_She pulled away from him to meet his gaze, her tired blue eyes glimmering with a spark of something unfamiliar. Promise. Hope._

_She shook her head and shrugged._

_"I'm serious, Undersee. I want to know. What makes me so lucky?" he asked again. This time his tone was more spiteful than he liked; bitter and a tad resentful, like he was daring her to explain which slight aspect of his burden of a life should have made him feel so fortunate._

_She stared back at him unflinchingly, as if to prove to him he wasn't nearly as intimidating as he thought he was._

_"I don't know," she finally spoke, smiling at him. He could tell she was lying._

_"You don't know?"_

_"Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm just the lucky one here." She planted a soft kiss at the edge of his jaw line before crawling to her side and drifting off to sleep._

_He couldn't tell in his half-conscious state whether or not she was being sarcastic - knowing Madge, that was highly possible, but he didn't care enough to spend the rest of the night analyzing it and lose out on precious sleep._

_The last thing he remembered thinking before any came to him was the realization that he would never understand Madge Undersee, no matter how hard he tried._

_Three days later, she was gone._

ii. i see signs now all the time; that you're not dead, you're sleeping

He barely recognizes her at first when he sees her leaning against the wall of an old building on his way home from work in the mines. Though her hair is worn the same and so much about her remains unchanged, it's like everything is new. He feels like he is seeing her for the first time (maybe he is), and it pulls at his heart in a way he doesn't want to have to think about.

At first he thinks he is seeing things (_there is no District 12 the Undersees are dead Madge is dead the rebellion is over none of this is real this cannot be real_), but then the stranger speaks his name, a broken smile hanging from the edges of her mouth, and he is certain that the tired, unkempt woman in front of him is indeed the girl he'd left to burn and crumble with the ruins of District 12.

She envelops him in an awkward embrace, her slender arms wrapping around his broad shoulders. Her touch says she doesn't hold the past against him, but her breathing gives her nerves away; unsteady and fretful.

They fall into a pattern quickly. It starts with late breakfasts and evenings spent walking through the snow-flurried streets of District 2, but it's not before long that Madge begins to spend her nights with Gale as well. It takes a while, but he experiences his first dreamless sleep in years sleeping next to Madge, grateful for a break from the nightmares.

It's almost natural the way they fit into each other, as if things had always been so easy, as though the past few years of their lives never happened at all. A routine unchanged and undisturbed.

But in the aftermath of all that fire and blood, surrounded by ruins and rubble and ash, it's nice to know some clarity - however fleeting or false or dangerous it may have been.

He doesn't remember knowing her very well Before the Fact, but she feels safe; warm and familiar enough to lose himself in and soothe his aches in ways he's sure no one else could have and in return, he is exactly what she needs him to be: solid and strong and most importantly, _there_.

Madge doesn't share a lot about what happened to her when the rebellion began, so he pieces together what he can by watching her, just paying attention. Something had changed in her, that was evident the minute he locked eyes with her on his way home from work that day. Where she was once warm and quick-witted, she is now vacant and too silent. Even her voice didn't sound the same. Not quite.

The one thing he did know was that she had managed to make it to District 13 with the rest of the survivors - quietly. That much, she'd told him. She had just lost everything - her home, her family, and had barely just escaped with her _life_, and as a result, kept mostly to herself; she'd taken to confining herself to her standard-issue tiny cell of a bedroom, slipping out only during meal times, keeping her head low and her voice unheard. She'd lived this way until the rebellion was over, and then she'd retreated to District 2, where she'd been ever since.

He understood this Madge as though she his mirror image, and found himself mourning the Madge he could not read.

iii. it was so like you to visit me, always worrying about someone else

"I can't remember the last time I actually had the chance to watch a flower bloom," Madge ponders aloud, her head resting against the wall behind them. It was just after sunrise, and the two of them sat idly on the bench in front of Gale's home, watching for the signs of spring coming into flourish. "It almost feels like I'm seeing it for the first time."

Gale's attention shifted to her, and he watched as her eyes studied the trees, admiring with envy the way nature always repaired itself.

Her gaze followed a small bird as it flew from its spot on a branch, behind Gale's head, until it disappeared into the distance. And then she was just looking at him.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks, tilting her head to the side.

He shrugs, but does not break the hold her eyes have on his. After what feels like an eternity, he gives her an answer. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" she challenges him with a grin.

He shakes his head in response. "No. I don't know."

After months of knowing what it is to sleep without waking, Gale's troubles with sleeping return without warning. It wasn't as though his nightmares had disappeared completely - some nights were harder than most. But those were fewer and farther between.

Suddenly, there have been weeks where he would barely sleep at all, laying awake in the night, staring at the ceiling as Madge slept soundlessly by his side.

One night, the panic becomes unbearable. He shuts his eyes and he sees a world engulfed in flames, haunted by the screams of all those he couldn't save. His conscience tells him it's not his fault, that every war has casualties, but every beat of his heart is a reminder of every single heartbeat that stopped. Every single heartbeat he couldn't hear but pounded through his brain anyway, coursing through his veins and weighing on his bones.

Gale's entire body grows uncomfortably hot, and the usually dull ache in the back of his head is sharp and prevalent. He slips out of bed and tiptoes to the bathroom, and slips into a cold shower for relief that does not come.

The longer he stands beneath the ice water - he finds - the more numb he becomes. So he waits until the cold almost seems to burn his skin, until he can't feel a thing at all. Although his mind is still racing, this helps, somehow. He returns to bed to find Madge sitting up against the headboard, hands tensely twisting with the sheets, though her expression remained as calm as ever.

"It's a really mucky night, isn't it?" she asks simply, ignoring the actual issue at hand.

He nods, grateful for her understanding, and crosses the room to crawl back into the space beside her.

Without another word, she buries one arm behind his neck, hand resting gently on his shoulder, and ruffles his hair with the other, her body just touching the side of his right arm.

He lays in silence and concentrates on her breathing and the feel of her touch in his hair, clinging to the hope that this stillness will help him drift off to sleep.

When sleep never comes, he opens his eyes and turns to her to find that she is also still awake. He instantly feels guilty for it, and whispers an apology.

"Sorry for keeping you up," he whispers, his voice coarse.

She shrugs, and smiles a sad kind of smile. "I've had worse nights."

He smiles too, because he understands, and the heaviness lifts a little.

She buries her head into his neck, softly pressing her lips against his shoulder. He relaxes into it, bringing his left hand around to intertwine with hers, pulling it away from its place in his hair.

She looks up at him with blonde hair draping over her eyes and he leans in to meet her lips with his. She returns the kiss almost breathlessly, and he relaxes even more.

iv. i believe in anything that brings you back home to me

Gale had never been a believer in fate. It was easy enough a concept to discredit after all that he'd been through and the life he'd known. Things just happened, or they didn't. There was no grand plan, no reason for existing that you didn't create yourself. But running into Madge that day could not have just been coincidence.


End file.
